BMW Z4

Roadsters aren’t the big-volume players in BMW’s line-up, but this genre has thrown up some of the Bavarian marque’s most iconic models over the years, dating back to the timeless 328 (1936-40) and sublime 507 (1956-59). In more recent times, we’ve had the offbeat Z1 (with its unusual vertically sliding doors) and the beautiful Z8 that served as James Bond’s ride in the 1999 blockbuster The World is Not Enough.

Countless rumours, speculation and spy shots later, arrives the 2019 BMW Z4. The roadster revealed its face at the Pebble Beach in its most powerful M40i guise which was later followed by the lesser sDrive20i and sDrive30i models.

The 2019 BMW Z4 Roadster has been making camouflaged appearances all over the world for a while now. To build some interest in the otherwise unloved nameplate, BMW now has officially dropped a teaser of their BMW Z4 prototype in its range-topping M40i avatar.

The Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este held on the scenic shores of Lake Como in northern Italy is amongst the best places for automotive manufacturers to showcase their offerings and that is what BMW intends to do with their Zagato Coupe concept.

After numerous complaints by owners, threats of a lawsuit and lambasting on U.S. news channels, BMW’s American arm is now conducting a full recall on all models fitted with the “award-winning” turbocharged 3.0-litre inline-6 engine due to reports of fuel pump failure.

The special-order BMW Z4 GT3 is a fixed-roof racing car offered by BMW to anyone ready to cough up US$ 400,000. The only problem is, in true IKEA style, you end up overpaying for something that comes in self-assembly-required boxes. Swedish racing team, Team West Coast Racing, bought the Z4 GT3, powered by a 480 hp 4.0-litre V8, and took 600 hours to finish building it, over 25 days.

Since my last report, much has happened with the “Z.” Besides getting a job in Abu Dhabi which called for multiple trips in the week to Abu Dhabi and back to Dubai, I had taken the car twice to Fujairah, became airborne with the car (almost becoming airborne myself!), and eventually selling it where it was shipped to Iran in June 2010. As a petrolhead, it was a fun experience to keep it always waxed up, hearing the deep exhaust and induction noise and most of all, driving with the roof down. An added minor benefit of having blue xenon lights is that traffic seems to get out of one’s way much faster.

We’ve had in our possession a 2000 BMW Z3 M Roadster since the beginning of 2008. It is as close as limited-income people like us can get to owning an exotic car without selling off kidneys and limbs. But in the past decade, the Z3 was replaced by the Z4, and then came a second-generation Z4 in 2009. So for a few days in 2010, we had in our possession a BMW Z4 sDrive30i. Ironically, the new mid-range Z4 now costs as much as the M Roadster used to cost a decade ago. So is a regular Z4 really at the same level as an M-tuned Z3 of the past?

So we finally get our hands on the all-new BMW Z4, if only because we now have friends within BMW. We suspect our tester, with 12000 km on the clock already, is really a 2009 rental model, but for the purposes of this preview we’ll refer to it as a 2010, to avoid appearing outdated. Remarkably, the car looks to be in perfect shape, which can’t be said for most test vehicles we get from Infiniti. Maybe the German firm is now concentrating on durability more than the Japanese themselves?